There
are many topics of major long-term significance that should be
addressed at the APEC conference, but one is of consuming importance
and overwhelming urgency. We all know exactly what it is, and why it
must be placed at the forefront of concern -- and more important,
instant action. This conference provides an opportunity -- there may
not be many more -- to terminate the tragedy that is once again
reaching shocking proportions in East Timor. The Indonesian military
forces who invaded East Timor 24 years ago, and have been slaughtering
and terrorizing its inhabitants ever since, are right now, as I write,
in the process of sadistically destroying what remains: the
population, the cities and villages. What they are planning, we cannot
be sure: a Carthaginian solution is not out of the question.

The
tragedy of East Timor has been one of the most awesome of this
terrible century. It is also of particular moral significance for us,
for the simplest and most obvious of reasons. Western complicity has
been direct and decisive. The expected corollary also holds: unlike
the crimes of official enemies, these can be ended by means that have
always been readily available, and still are.

The current wave of terror and destruction began early this year,
under the pretense that the atrocities were the work of "uncontrolled
militias." It was quickly revealed that these were paramilitary forces
armed, organized, and directed by the Indonesian army, who also
participated directly in their "criminal activities," as these have
just been described by Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas, still
maintaining the shameful pretense that the "military institution" that
is directing the crimes is seeking to stop them.

The Indonesian military forces are commonly described as "rogue
elements." That is hardly accurate. Most prominent among them are
Kopassus units sent to East Timor to carry out the actions for which
they are famed, and dreaded. They have "the job of managing the
militias, many observers believe," veteran Asia correspondent David
Jenkins reported as the terror was mounting. Kopassus is the "crack
special forces unit" modeled on the U.S. Green Berets that had "been
training regularly with US and Australian forces until their behaviour
became too much of an embarrassment for their foreign friends." These
forces are "legendary for their cruelty," observes Benedict Anderson,
one of the leading Indonesia scholars. In East Timor, Anderson
continues, "Kopassus became the pioneer and exemplar for every kind of
atrocity," including systematic rapes, tortures and executions, and
organization of hooded gangsters.

Jenkins wrote that Kopassus officers, trained in the United States,
adopted the tactics of the US Phoenix program in South Vietnam, which
killed tens of thousands of peasants and much of the indigenous South
Vietnamese leadership, as well as "the tactics employed by the
Contras" in Nicaragua, following lessons taught by their CIA mentors
that it should be unnecessary to review. The state terrorists were
"not simply going after the most radical pro-independence people but
going after the moderates, the people who have influence in their
community." "It's Phoenix," a well-placed source in Jakarta reported:
the aim is "to terrorise everyone" -- the NGOs, the Red Cross, the UN,
the journalists.

All of this was well before the referendum and the atrocities
conducted in its immediate aftermath. As to these, there is good
reason to heed the judgment of a high-ranking Western official in Dili.
"Make no mistake," he reported: "this is being directed from Jakarta.
This is not a situation where a few gangs of rag-tag militia are out
of control. As everybody here knows, it has been a military operation
from start to finish."

The official was speaking from the UN compound in which the UN
observers, the last few reporters, and thousands of terrified Timorese
finally took refuge, beseiged by Indonesia's paramilitary agents. At
that time, a few days ago, the UN estimated that violent expulsions
had perhaps reached 200,000 people, about a quarter of the population,
with unknown numbers killed and physical destruction running to
billions of dollars. At best, it would take decades to rebuild the
territory's basic infrastructure, they concluded. And the army may
well have still more far-reaching goals.

In the months before the August 30 referendum, the horror story
continued. Citing diplomatic, church, and militia sources, Australian
journalists reported in July "that hundreds of modern assault rifles,
grenades and mortars are being stockpiled, ready for use if the
autonomy [within Indonesia] option is rejected at the ballot box."
They warned that the army-run militias might be planning a violent
takeover of much of the territory if, despite the terror, the popular
will would be expressed. All of this was well understood by the
"foreign friends," who also knew how to bring the terror to an end,
but preferred to delay, hesitate, and keep to evasive and ambiguous
reactions that the Indonesian Generals could easily interpret as a
"green light" to carry out their grim work.

In a display of extraordinary courage and heroism, virtually the
entire population made their way to the ballot-boxes, many emerging
from hiding to do so. Braving brutal intimidation and terror, they
voted overwhelming in favor of the right of self-determination that
had long ago been endorsed by the United Nations Security Council and
the World Court.

Immediately, the Indonesian occupying forces reacted as had been
predicted by observers on the scene. The weapons that had been
stockpiled, and the forces that had been mobilized, conducted a
well-planned operation. They proceeded to drive out anyone who might
bring the terrible story to the outside world and cut off
communications, while massacring, expelling tens of thousands of
people to an unknown fate, burning and destroying, murdering priests
and nuns, and no one knows how many other hapless victims. The capital
city of Dili has been virtually destroyed. In the countryside, where
the army can rampage undetected, one can only guess what has taken
place.

Even before the latest outrages, highly credible Church sources had
reported 3-5000 killed in 1999, well beyond the scale of atrocities in
Kosovo prior to the NATO bombings. The scale might even reach the
level of Rwanda if the "foreign friends" keep to timid expressions of
disapproval while insisting that internal security in East Timor "is
the responsibility of the Government of Indonesia, and we don't want
to take that responsibility away from them" -- the official position
of the State Department a few days before the August 30 referendum.

It would have been far less hypocritical to have said, early this
year, that internal security in Kosovo "is the responsibility of the
Government of Yugoslavia, and we don't want to take that
responsibility away from them." Indonesia's crimes in East Timor have
been vastly greater, even just this year, not to speak of their
actions during the years of aggression and terror; Western-backed, we
should never allow ourselves to forget. That aside, Indonesia has no
claim whatsoever to the territory it invaded and occupied, apart from
the claim based on support by the Great Powers.

The "foreign friends" also understand that direct intervention in
the occupied territory, however justified, might not even be
necessary. If the United States were to take a clear, unambiguous, and
public stand, informing the Indonesian Generals that this game is
over, that might very well suffice. The same has been true for the
past quarter-century, as the US provided critical military and
diplomatic support for the invasion and atrocities. These were
directed by General Suharto, compiling yet another chapter in his
gruesome record, always with Western support, and often acclaim. He
was once again praised by the Clinton Administration. He is "our kind
of guy," the Administration declared as he visited Washington shortly
before he fell from grace by losing control and dragging his feet on
IMF orders.

If changing the former green light to a new red light does not
suffice, Washington and its allies have ample means at their disposal:
termination of arms sales to the killers; initiation of war crimes
trials against the army leadership -- not an insignificant threat;
cutting the economic support funds that are, incidentally, not without
their ambiguities; putting a hold on Western energy corporations and
multinationals, along with other investment and commercial activities.
There is also no reason to shy away from peacekeeping forces to
replace the occupying terrorist army, if that proves necessary.
Indonesia has no authority to "invite" foreign intervention, as
President Clinton urged, any more than Saddam Hussein had authority to
invite foreign intervention in Kuwait, or Nazi Germany in France in
1944 for that matter. If dispatch of peacekeeping forces is disguised
by such prettified terminology, it is of no great importance, as long
as we do not succumb to illusions that prevent us from understanding
what has happened, and what it portends.

What the U.S. and its allies are doing, we scarcely know. The New
York Times reports that the Defense Department is "taking the lead in
dealing with the crisis,...hoping to make use of longstanding ties
between the Pentagon and the Indonesian military." The nature of these
ties over many decades is no secret. Important light on the current
stage is provided by Alan Nairn, who survived the Dili massacre in
1991 and barely escaped with his life in Dili again a few days ago. In
another stunning investigative achievement, Nairn has just revealed
that immediately after the vicious massacre of dozens of refugees
seeking shelter in a church in Liquica, U.S. Pacific Commander Admiral
Dennis Blair assured Indonesian Army chief General Wiranto of US
support and assistance, proposing a new U.S. training mission.

On September 8, the Pacific Command announced that Admiral Blair is
once again being sent to Indonesia to convey U.S. concerns. On the
same day, Secretary of Defense William Cohen reported that a week
before the referendum in August, the US was carrying out joint
operations with the Indonesian army -- "a U.S.-Indonesian training
exercise focused on humanitarian and disaster relief activities," the
wire services reported. The fact that Cohen could say this without
shame leaves one numb with amazement. The training exercise was put to
use within days -- in the standard way, as all but the voluntarily
blind must surely understand after many years of the same tales, the
same outcomes.

Every slight move comes with an implicit retraction. On the eve of
the APEC meeting, on September 9, Clinton announced the termination of
military ties; but without cutting off arms sales, and while declaring
East Timor to be "still a part of Indonesia," which it is not and has
never been. The decision was delivered to General Wiranto by Admiral
Blair. It takes no unusual cynicism to watch the current secret
interactions with a skeptical eye.

Skepticism is only heightened by the historical record: to mention
one recent case, Clinton's evasion of congressional restrictions
barring U.S. training of Indonesian military officers after the Dili
massacre. The earlier record is far worse from the first days of the
U.S.-authorized invasion. While the U.S. publicly condemned the
aggression, Washington secretly supported it with a new flow of arms,
which was increased by the Carter Administration as the slaughter
reached near-genocidal levels in 1978. It was then that highly
credible Church and other sources in East Timor attempted to make
public the estimates of 200,000 deaths that came to be accepted years
later, after constantly denial.

Every student in the West, every citizen with even a minimal
concern for international affairs, should know by heart the frank and
honest description of the opening days of the invasion by Senator
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then America's U.N. Ambassador. The Security
Council ordered the invaders to withdraw at once, but without effect.
In his memoirs, published as the terror peaked 20 years ago, Moynihan
explained the reasons: "The United States wished things to turn out as
they did," and he dutifully "worked to bring this about," rendering
the UN "utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook." As for
how "things turned out," Moynihan comments that within a few months
60,000 Timorese had been killed, "almost the proportion of casualties
experienced by the Soviet Union during the Second World War." End of
story, though not in the real world.

So matters have continued since, not just in the United States.
England has a particularly ugly record, as do Australia, France, and
all too many others. That fact alone confers on them enormous
responsibility to act, not only to end the atrocities, but to provide
reparations as at least some miserable gesture of compensation for
their crimes.

The reasons for the Western stance are very clear. They are
currently stated with brutal frankness. "The dilemma is that Indonesia
matters and East Timor doesn't," a Western diplomat in Jakarta bluntly
observed a few days ago. It is no "dilemma," he might have added, but
rather standard operating procedure. Explaining why the U.S. refuses
to take a stand, New York Times Asia specialists Elizabeth Becker and
Philip Shenon report that the Clinton Administration "has made the
calculation that the United States must put its relationship with
Indonesia, a mineral-rich nation of more than 200 million people,
ahead of its concern over the political fate of East Timor, a tiny
impoverished territory of 800,000 people that is seeking
independence." Their fate as human beings apparently does not even
reach the radar screen, for these calculations. The Washington Post
quotes Douglas Paal, president of the Asia Pacific Policy Center,
reporting the facts of life: "Timor is a speed bump on the road to
dealing with Jakarta, and we've got to get over it safely. Indonesia
is such a big place and so central to the stability of the region."

Even without secret Pentagon assurances, Indonesian Generals can
surely read these statements and draw the conclusion that they will be
granted leeway to work their will.

The analogy to Kosovo has repeatedly been drawn in the past days.
It is singularly inappropriate, in many crucial respects. A closer
analogy would be to Iraq-Kuwait, though this radically understates the
scale of the atrocities and the culpability of the United States and
its allies. There is still time, though very little time, to prevent a
hideous consummation of one of the most appalling tragedies of the
terrible century that is winding to a horrifying, wrenching close.